


date night

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Asexual Bucky Barnes, Beta Bucky Barnes, Beta Sam Wilson, Drug Use, Established Relationship, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Omega Natasha Romanov, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Truth Serum, everyone is having a good time here, the sex is vaguely dubconny except for how it isnt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22975303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: “Hey, who wants to shoot me?” Natasha asks, walking into the living room. Bucky notes, disgruntled, that she’s stolen one of his scrunchies again. Why can’t she just get her own scrunchies. He’d be fine with sharing if he knew for a fact that she wouldn’t lose them in Russia or Korea on an op. Again. He’s running out.She’s also holding a tranq gun that is unnecessarily long. It looks ridiculous when slim, not particularly tall Natasha holds it. It’s almost impressively impractical.“Why does that have to be the injection method?” Sam asks, with the exact same tone he used when he caught Steve drinking straight from the carton. Some incredulity, mostly judgy.“Well, I could just take one of the tranq darts and stab it into my thigh,” Natasha says. “But where’s the fun in that?”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Comments: 19
Kudos: 175
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	date night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



> Thank you so much for your patience, Zepys! I hope you like the fic

Natasha’s a bit like a cat, in that she wanders in and out of their lives as she pleases. Also, she likes taking naps in beams of sunlight and lounging around on their laps until Sam’s leg is painfully asleep. So he doesn’t really raise an eyebrow when she wanders into their apartment on a Wednesday like she’d just popped out for a bit to go and get some groceries, when he actually hasn’t seen her since November. 

“Hey,” she says with an easy smile, tossing a shopping bag onto the counter as she heads towards the fridge. There are colorful blouses at the top of the bag, but it makes a sort of  _ clank _ noise as she sets it down on the marble countertop. He’d bet ten bucks that that dainty bag holds a small arsenal underneath all of the designer clothes. 

“Nice of you to show up,” Sam says, who hasn’t received so much as a text since she casually disappeared and is trying to not be all catty about it, but he has unfortunately little practice at actually trying to reel the passive aggresiveness back in. 

“Sorry,” she says as she scans the fridge for anything good. “Ukraine. Mission went FUBAR. Radio silence. You get it.” 

_ You could’ve taken me with you, _ a part of him wants to say. This part of him sounds kind of whiny and petty, so he ignores it. 

Even if he would’ve liked to shoot some Putin cronies in the face, or whatever she was doing. 

“So, how confidential is this Ukraine mission, exactly? So confidential that I can’t live vicariously through you?” he asks, letting the grumpiness go. It was grumpiness over missing her, after all. Seems kinda dumb to let it ruin his enjoyment of her actually finally being here again. 

She grins at him over the fridge door as she steals the leftover Thai from yesterday that he  _ knows  _ that Bucky was saving for later. Well, Bucky stole all of the covers last night, so Sam definitely isn’t seeing her popping it into the microwave right now. “It wasn’t that exciting.” 

That’s code for ‘it was ninety percent mind numbing stake outs and then ten percent pure adrenaline fueled martial arts and bullets’. He makes an envious sound. 

“I got into an argument with a soccer mom at a Starbucks yesterday,” he offers. 

“Oh, sounds bloody.” 

“She cut in line and then shouted at the barista. She was an alpha and her name was Helen.” 

“Oof.” She takes out the Thai from the micro and pours some chili sauce on it. “I’ll probably need a partner or three on my next mission,” she says without looking at him, casually sliding him an olive branch for something that he’d already forgiven her for. 

“Yeah?” he asks, trying not to perk up too obviously. He  _ definitely _ isn’t an adrenaline junkie. Thrill seeking behavior? Not here, no sir. That’s everyone else in this relationship. He’s the mature one, the sensible beta. (Bucky’s the very much  _ not  _ sensible beta.) He only has  _ three _ guns hidden in this apartment, unlike some people. He tried to use the blender last week and found a revolver in it. Who even uses a revolver any longer? And where is he supposed to make his avocado-banana-oat smoothie? “You sure?” 

“Very sure,” she says after swallowing her mouthful. She steps into his space and kisses him and he sinks into it for a bit. He’s missed her. She tastes like spicy chicken. 

“It’s a date,” he says once she retreats to take another bite from her food. She must be hungry. 

“Speaking of dates,” she says, and proceeds to remind him why he’s the one going prematurely gray in this home. 

“A drug party?” Steve asks, his eyebrows somewhere near his hairline. 

“More like a drug sleepover,” Natasha says as she removes her makeup. Not just from her face, but her neck as well. There are dark bruises there. Nothing new. He’s seen worse on her. But Sam is  _ definitely _ coming with her on her next mission. 

“I’m not sure how cocaine would mix with my anti depressants,” Bucky says with dry humor. “I’ll have to ask my doc.” 

Sam shudders at the idea of Bucky on coke. He shudders at the idea of  _ Steve _ on coke. He honestly doesn’t know which one would be worse. 

Natasha snorts. “Cocaine,” she says derisively. “We’re not Wall Street brokers. Or… or stay at home omegas with four kids and useless alpha spouses.” 

“That’s the target demographic of cocaine?” Steve asks. 

“Yup.” She pops the P. “Also, I’m the only one getting high.” 

“Where did this hobby come from?” Sam asks incredulously. “Was Ukraine just that wild?” 

“I’ve been doing this since I was a kid.” She tosses her used wipes in the trash, and it’s sort of like a switch flips in Sam’s brain. Make up Natasha is outside, public Natasha. No make up Natasha is private, inside Natasha. It’s sort of the same feeling like putting on his PJs. “It’s just that in the last decade or so I’ve been having Clint babysit me. But he’s busy now, and I need to do this ASAP.” 

Hooo boy. Since she was a kid? This is a whole can of worms that Sam hadn’t even known was there to look out for. A minefield of cans of worms. An unpleasant surprise of worms. And of  _ course _ she says all of this so casually that he can’t help but wonder if maybe it  _ isn’t  _ a problem that she’s been doing drugs since she was a kid and ‘needs to do it ASAP’. 

“What’s the rush?” he asks, carefully matching her casualness. Come on too strong, and you spook the cat away. 

“There’s a new drug on the market,” she explains, as she turns her back to Steve, tucking her hair out of the way. “Help me out of my vest? Thanks. There’s a new drug on the market, and it’s getting pretty popular. The enemy used it on the mission I was just on, in fact. Used it on my getaway driver. I’ve never heard him speak more than three words in my life, and all of a sudden he’s singing like a canary bird. I had to break his jaw myself to get him to stop spewing SHIELD secrets.”

“Damn,” is all Sam can say. “That sounds like some real inconvenient shit.” 

“It is,” she says, disgruntled. 

“... Where would one get this drug?” Bucky asks, sounding far too intrigued. 

“Well  _ I _ got it off the corpses of my enemies,” she says, shooting Bucky a wry grin. Steve hands her a pair of her own pyjama bottoms, and a henley that’s so large and stretched that it definitely belongs to either Steve or Bucky. Sam knows how to buy clothes that actually fit him, after all. 

Bucky nods seriously. “Oh, I’ve been there, yeah. Great prices.” 

“So, here’s the plan. I’m going to inject myself with this stuff every few days in increasing dosages until I either start gaining an immunity or learn how to deal with it without sharing every single classified secret that I know, whichever one comes first. But I need someone to look out for me while I’m high, I don’t know how functional I’ll be. This is gonna be my first time on it, so it’ll probably hit me the hardest this time. Okay?” 

Sam doesn’t need to exchange looks with Bucky and Steve to know what the answer for all of them is. “Of course.” 

She grins. “It’s a date.” 

Someone seriously needs to get around to teaching Sam’s datemates what an actual date is like, because he doesn’t seem to be having much success so far. Nevermind that what he did with Riley usually involved explosives and ‘borrowed’ jetpacks. That was Riley’s fault and he’s standing by it. 

-

Over the years, Bucky’s relaxed enough to only do one sweep of the house per day, checking for bugs, surveillance, suspicious individuals, vehicles, and movements. Today, he does three. Having Natasha here usually makes him feel  _ more _ secure, but she’s going to be compromised this time. Not in fighting shape. 

The prime time to strike her down, for her enemies. And she has so many of them. 

“Checked the toilet lid for bombs yet?” Sam asks sarcastically. Bucky’s climbed up the wall via sustained leverage between the two corner walls using his legs, and he’s just finished inspecting the dusty vent for anything that isn’t supposed to be there. He slots the lid back into place and drops back to the floor. 

“All clear,” he confirms, face deliberately blank. 

Sam makes a face at him, looking not entirely sure whether it’s a joke or the truth, which is when Steve comes back from the store. He shuts the door closed behind him with a foot, and holds a tote bag up triumphantly. 

“Got the supplies,” he says with a smile. Bucky heads over to start doing all of the locks up as Steve kneels to unlace his shoes. They’ve got one of those security bars for the door now, the ones that wedge it shut against being opened or kicked in. He’s still a bit enamored with it, and is wearing Sam down on getting one on  _ all  _ of the doors, and not just the front and back ones. 

‘Supplies’ in this case mostly means snacks and juice and such. Bucky’s never gotten high for  _ fun _ before, and Steve can’t get high at all any longer with few exceptions, but Sam and Natasha had both agreed that it was a good idea. 

“You got the good orange juice boxes,” Sam says approvingly, peering into the tote bag at Steve’s supplies. 

“It tastes _ exactly _ like the other kind.” 

“Aren’t you supposed to have heightened senses or something?” 

“Yes, and they taste  _ exactly the same.”  _

“You’re making me sad for you, man.” 

Bucky finished securing the locks. “Were you followed?” he asks, even though he knows that Steve would’ve brought it up by now if he had been. 

“I wasn’t,” he says, even though Steve knows that as well. 

It’s relaxing, the ritual of it. Like touching a lock that you know you’ve already locked, just making sure that you’d remembered to do it, that it hadn’t slipped your mind. Just making sure. 

“Did you get gummy bears?” he asks next. 

Steve sighs, digs through the bag, and holds them up. Bucky looks them over seriously, and nods once with approval. 

“Did he get the flaming hot cheetos?” Natasha calls out from the bedroom. 

“Yes!” Steve calls out, exasperated, at the same time as Sam. “I know what you all like by now, for god’s sake.” 

“Says the guy who got the  _ foam hand soap _ last week,” Sam says. 

“I like the foam hand soap,” Bucky says with contrarian spirit. 

“We can’t have four of everything,” Steve says. “I mean, we’ve got the budget, but think of the space issues.” 

This is fair. Bucky would have less hidden compartments to hide spare guns, knives, and ammo in. 

“Hey, who wants to shoot me?” Natasha asks, walking into the living room. Bucky notes, disgruntled, that she’s stolen one of his scrunchies again. Why can’t she just get her  _ own _ scrunchies. He’d be fine with sharing if he knew for a fact that she wouldn’t lose them in Russia or Korea on an op.  _ Again. _ He’s running out. 

She’s also holding a tranq gun that is  _ unnecessarily _ long. It looks ridiculous when slim, not particularly tall Natasha holds it. It’s almost impressively impractical. 

“Why does _ that  _ have to be the injection method?” Sam asks, with the exact same tone he used when he caught Steve drinking straight from the carton. Some incredulity, mostly judgy. 

“Well, I  _ could _ just take one of the tranq darts and stab it into my thigh,” Natasha says. “But where’s the fun in that?” 

“Dibs,” Bucky and Steve say at the same time. They narrow their eyes at each other. Bucky can very clearly see Steve coming up with ideas to win the rights to pull the trigger. Which is ridiculous. Bucky’s the sniper here, he’s a much better shot than that asshole, and he’s ready to forcefully remind him of the fact. 

“Are you going to trying to dodge the shots?” Sam asks, intrigue starting to bleed into his voice. 

She makes an expression that is almost a pout. “That’d be a waste of precious ammo, unfortunately. It’s hard to get your hands on this stuff, and I don’t have a supplier ready to get more once I run out.” 

Steve makes a disappointed noise at the revelation that they won’t be playing a fun game of ‘try and shoot the super spy’. Bucky is also feeling a little bit let down. Sam is clearly trying to hide that he feels the same way. 

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I have another idea for making it interesting.” 

She promptly shucks her pants off, and starts drawing a bullseye on her thigh with a black marker. Steve laughs, surprised. 

“Bet you can’t hit dead center,” she says teasingly. 

“How far away are you standing?” Sam asks, which makes Bucky snort disdainfully. The distance does not matter. The result will be the same. 

“Other side of the living room,” she says. 

“If I lie down on the counter, I’ll have a clear line of sight all the way from the kitchen,” Bucky offers, which is how he wins trigger pulling rights from Steve. 

The tranq gun is less ridiculously proportioned in his own hands, but still a bit over the top in his opinion. He gets into position. Natasha lounges on top of the backrest of the couch, making it look for all the world like an entirely natural and comfortable pose for a human being to take during their leisure time. She’s gazing off into the distance, all mysterious and wistful, like she’s just a model at a photo shoot. The bullseye drawn on her thigh is clearly displayed. 

“Heeere batter, batter,” Sam says lowly, and Steve snorts and there’s the soft sound of a playful hit. Sam chuckles. Bucky keeps his eyes on the prize. 

Squeezes the trigger. The dart shoots out with a muted sound, sailing through the air-- it hits, dead center. Natasha doesn’t so much as twitch a muscle, looking just as relaxed as she had a second ago when a dart hadn’t been buried in her flesh. Steve and Sam politely golf clap, and she glances over at the dart and raises her eyebrows just slightly in gentle, artificial surprise like she hadn’t noticed it until now. 

Bucky grins just a little bit, and rolls off the counter. Steve pulls out the dart and Sam slaps a band aid on it. 

“My heroes,” Natasha says blandly. 

“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” Steve says in his best  _ aw shucks _ voice. 

That gets a real smile out of her. Good. That means that she’s relaxed enough to actually show her emotions. Relaxed, when she’s trying out a new drug for the first time that makes you uncontrollably spew all of your secrets. She could just take the drug and crawl into some dark, isolated hole to burn it out alone, but instead she felt safe enough to ask them for help, to look after her. Because she trusts them with herself, even when she knows she’s about to be vulnerable. Like her heats, sort of. 

Warmth stirs in the pit of Bucky’s stomach at that.  _ Not  _ the best time for that. Going on a drug bender is very different from going into heat, even if seems to be hitting him in the same way in the part of him that goes soft and amazed when people trust him with their safety, despite and contrary to all logic and common sense. 

Sam hands Natasha her pants back, and she wriggles back into them without bothering to do anything to get the bullseye off, rolling onto the couch proper. Steve gets the snacks and strews them haphazardly across the coffee table in a way that makes Bucky and Sam give him identical looks of disapproval that he shamelessly ignores, while Natasha starts fiddling with the remote, turning the TV on. They all get settled in on the couch. 

“Feeling anything yet?” Steve asks curiously. He has never been high before, which Bucky already knew, but sometimes he goes out of his way to make that very obvious. 

“Let’s give it five minutes first, Rogers,” she says fondly. 

Bucky studies. She looks really, truly calm. She’s an expert actor, a professional liar. If he wanted them fooled, he’s confident that she’d be able to get away with it. But she’s been trying to let down her mask around them more, to let herself be known, flaws and all. He trusts her. He thinks that she’s showing them the truth, right now. 

Natasha just let him inject a truth serum into her, and she’s calmly waiting for it to kick in as Sam and Steve argue over whether they should watch Grace and Frankie or the Witcher as Bucky looks on. She has enough secrets to cause more than one revolution, and she doesn’t seem to mind the idea of any of them knowing all of them. 

Spies thrive on secrecy, survive by never trusting anyone. The Black Widow is the best spy of them all. And yet, here she is, and she doesn’t even look tense. 

She loves them. She’s never said it in words, but she doesn’t need to. He leans a little bit into her side, and she hums happily and rests her head on his shoulder, throwing her legs over Sam’s lap. 

Whatever happens tonight, whatever she says, they’re going to take good care of her. He’ll make sure of it. 

-

Half an episode into Henry Cavill looking vaguely greasy and constipated, but in a sexy sort of way, Natasha starts to smell different. 

Steve doesn’t really talk much about the whole ‘enhanced senses’ thing. It doesn’t come up quite as often as his strength, speed, stamina, and reflexes do, after all, and enhanced senses help you more when people don’t know that they have to stand further away than they think to have a whispered conversation that he can’t eavesdrop on. Plus, it seems sort of inappropriate to casually comment someone’s  _ smell, _ as if he’s been standing close to them and inhaling their musk or something. 

He really doesn’t have to do that to notice a difference in someone’s scent. It stands out to his mind sharply, even if he isn’t trying to pay attention to it. He smelled Tony’s flu coming in days before the first sniffle, from a brief moment when he lifted his mask in the middle of a fight while they strategized. He knew that that nice barista at the coffee shop he liked was pregnant before he himself did, which was a bit awkward when he congratulated him. Sex in particular has a very… distinct scent to it, even if the person in question has tidied themselves up all neat and composed, the musk of it lingering on their skin and their breath. 

The fact that being on drugs would affect her scent isn’t all that surprising. It being such a  _ familiar _ scent, on the other hand, is. 

“Nat?” he asks, officially turning his attention away from the screen. It was a confusing show anyways. “You feeling any different?” 

There’s a brief pause, and then haltingly, as if it’s being wrenched out of her, “I feel a bit strange.” And then, “Damn.” 

“Did you just try to lie?” he asks, a bit amused and disconcerted at the same time. 

“Just to see if I could. And apparently, I can’t. It’s not really the uncontrolled gushing that Pedro experienced, though.” Her eyes widen a bit, which might as well be a dramatic gasp, coming from her. “I didn’t mean to say his real name.” 

“So it’s just affecting you when you try to actively lie?” Sam asks. “Doesn’t sound too bad.” 

“That may just be because it’s only beginning to hit me,” she says. “It might get worse as it sinks in.” 

“How much lying can you get away with?” Bucky asks. “No active direct lying, and lying of omission is okay for now. What about implying things?” 

“Hm,” she says. “I’ll try it out. Ask me questions.” 

“What’s your favorite color?” Sam asks. 

“Blue is a lovely color,” she says, mild and pleasant. But then her flawless smile goes stiff and unnatural at the edges, like plastic. She clenches her jaw. She shakes, for a few moments, before it tears out of her almost painfully,  _ “Red.”  _

“Are you okay?” Steve asks as Sam and Bucky crowd close to her with alarmed concern, as Natasha pants in the way she only ever does if she’s truly pushed herself during an exercise. This is… worse than what he’d pictured. She looks like she’s in  _ pain.  _

“No,” she says automatically, and then bares her teeth as if the answer infuriates her. “As in, I’m not perfectly alright, but I’ve had far worse than this.” 

Steve can’t smell blood at least, but that doesn’t mean much. Something very, very bad could be happening to her insides right now. What if she’s allergic or something to one of the chemicals in the drug? What if the dosage was wrong for her? They did just one dart, but how much larger was this Pedro person than her? Natasha’s lithely muscled, but slim, small. Maybe the darts were crafted with larger people in mind, big, sturdy, muscular ones like Steve, not the agents who can squeeze their way through an air vent and smile pretty at you in a bar so that when they stab you it’s unexpected, like Natasha. 

He wants to push Sam aside and press close to her, bury his nose into her neck and figure out why that damned scent is so familiar. Instead he leans in close against Sam’s back, and tries to not be too obvious about breathing through his nose. 

It’s not like he can smell pain or emotions or anything like that. But sickness and blood and the physical things, that he can usually pin down. 

Bucky places two of his flesh and blood fingers on Natasha’s neck, taking her pulse. “Noticing any other symptoms?” he asks, all clinical business, as if he isn’t still as much of a mother hen as he was back in the forties. A faint furrow of worry appears between his brows. Her pulse is probably abnormal, then. 

“Yes,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate. She looks smugly pleased by her act of unhelpfulness. 

“Congratulations,” Sam says flatly. “But really, are you good? Are you gonna have a heart attack in front of us or something? Now that I think about it, maybe experimenting with weird black ops drugs that we don’t know anything about at home by ourselves wasn’t the  _ greatest _ idea.” 

“Pedro was fine,” she says dismissively. Her jaw works for a moment, like she’s trying to bite something back, and then it bursts out, “I’m good, I don’t think I’m going to have a heart attack, I know the symptoms for that.” 

She narrows her eyes slightly with frustration at having answered Sam’s questions. 

“You said you were noticing other symptoms,” Bucky says, and he’d sound flat and unamused if it weren’t for the fact that that’s just how he talks now. He’s just prompting her. His hand has gone from her neck to her shoulder, thumb absentmindedly stroking circles into the skin exposed by the slipping, too large shirt there. He’s normally as still as a predator about to pounce, even during moments of leisure. Nervous energy. 

Steve leans in closer to Natasha. Really what  _ is _ that smell? It’s so, so familiar. And pleasant. It makes his mouth water, even though it doesn’t smell like food, exactly. 

“Steve, you’re crushing me,” Sam says, and so he is. Steve’s got him smushed up between him and Natasha. He hadn’t even noticed that he was doing that, had just wanted to be  _ closer. _ It’s just. He’s _ so _ close to figuring it out, it’s right on the tip of his tongue. 

“Sorry,” he says to Sam, still hopelessly distracted by the scent. It’s kind of driving him crazy, a little bit. He’s  _ definitely _ smelled it before. 

“That wasn’t a question,” Natasha notes, in Bucky’s direction. “So I don’t have to answer it. I  _ want _ to, but I can avoid it. Interesting.” 

“Glad to help,” Bucky says, in the exact same tone, except this time Steve’s pretty sure that the tone matches what he’s feeling. “What are your other symptoms?” 

Natasha presses her hand over her mouth. Seconds tick by. 

“Okay so I know that the whole point of this was for you to get used to not spilling your guts even while on truth serum,” says Sam. “But could we maybe try that out with some other less urgent and actually important questions?” 

She presses so firmly down onto her mouth that Steve’s certain that there’s going to be a hand shaped bruise pressed over the lower half of her face like a kiss later. She’s shaking with effort. She  _ wriggles, _ pinned between Bucky and Sam. Her breathing through her nose is heavy, labored. 

It finally clicks. Steve’s eyes go  _ round.  _

“Nat,” he says, sounding far calmer than he feels. “Was Pedro an omega too?” 

Or had he been an alpha or a beta, like the majority of field agents were? 

_ “He was an alpha,”  _ spills out of her, her hand falling away. Her eyes are almost feverishly bright, a little bit manic as the words rip out of her. “And I’m so  _ hot, _ sweating, restless, like I  _ need _ to get out of my skin, my clothes--” 

“Ah,” he says blankly. “You… smell like heat.” 

She does. He recognizes that scent, of course he does.  _ Regular _ alphas can smell the heat on an omega. It makes sense that Bucky and Sam haven’t, them being betas. Steve on the other hand doesn’t have much of an excuse. Not only can he smell a heat, he can smell it days before it arrives. It just… hadn’t really occurred to him that it could happen here and now, so suddenly. He’s always had such an early warning, and now Natasha’s been thrown into the deep end of the pool in less than an hour. She’s  _ in it.  _

“Oh,” she says, sounding a little breathy. “That makes sense.” 

“Excuse me?” Sam asks, eyebrows rising. “Why the hell would a  _ truth serum _ set off a  _ heat?”  _

“Medication can have different effects on different presentations,” Bucky says, which, he would know, after all. “Unintended side effects.” 

“Who wants to bet that they just tested the drug on a sample of alphas and called it a day?” Natasha asks, and then laughs, a little wild, throaty. Warmth stirs in Steve’s stomach at the sound of it, at the maddening scent of her. 

“Damn,” Sam says. “So you get uncontrollably telling the truth  _ and  _ uncontrollably horny. I  _ really _ hope you don’t get whammied with this while out in the field now.” 

Natasha arches, pressing back into Bucky’s solid frame, fingers digging into Sam’s arm. Steve’s already half hard from the scent of her alone, of watching her squirm in between their mates. 

“That just means I  _ really _ need to get used to it,” she purrs, and Steve’s pretty sure that  _ anything _ she says right now would sound husky and suggestive. 

“How long is this heat even going to last?” Sam asks, ever practical. “The regular week? Longer? Shorter? Just for as long as the drug stays in your system? Are there going to be side effects? Will--” 

“Let’s find out,” she says, and darts forward to kiss Sam. 

“Mmph!” Sam goes stiff and wide eyed at the kiss, an unusual reaction from him. A moan wrenches itself out of Natasha’s mouth even though it’s just a kiss, they aren’t even  _ touching _ her (yet, they’re going to touch her, they’re going to have sex and the circumstances are sort of chaotic and maybe bad but Steve’s dick is ecstatic). Sam removes himself from her enough to speak, and a soft sound of disappointment escapes Natasha, which is  _ very  _ unusual for her. 

Steve hasn’t exactly been around the block, but she is by  _ far _ the most composed omega he has ever slept with during a heat. She was trained to stay in control during them, apparently, and he’s not sure that he really wants to know the details of how the Red Room went about making sure of that. He just knows that normally just a bit more passion, a bit more neediness seeps out of the edges of her tightly controlled mask during her heats, and this isn’t that. It’s barely even begun, and she’s already  _ moaning.  _

Maybe it’s the drug, making it more intense for her. Maybe it’s that she’s had no warning, no time to brace herself. Either way, the sight of Natasha pressing her thighs tightly together like she needs friction  _ now _ and can’t bear to take her hands off of Sam does  _ things _ to him. 

“I don’t know if you’re still all there enough to notice how  _ dubious _ this whole situation is,” Sam says. “But it’s definitely sort of fucky.” 

“If someone here doesn’t fuck me I’m going to burn the house down,” Natasha says frankly, which is a pretty dire threat considering that Sam and Bucky finally became satisfied with the interior decorating only a few weeks ago. Natasha’s only concern with the process had been multiple subtle weapon caches hidden around the place, and Steve would be fine with living in a bare concrete box, leaving the two betas to passionately bicker about it alone. Steve really doesn’t want to experience that whole situation again though, even secondhand. Sam and Bucky had disagreed  _ strongly  _ on more than a few points, and compromise had been hardwon. 

“Wait,” Sam says. “Wait. You’re on a truth serum right now. You’re going to actually  _ burn my house down?”  _

_ “Your  _ house?” Bucky asks sharply. 

“It’s my name on the deed!” 

“I’m legally dead, that’s cheating.” 

“I have gasoline, I have a lighter, I have a ready backup identity, nothing is stopping me,” Natasha interrupts the argument before it can really get going. She’s stroking her hands up and down Sam’s biceps like she doesn’t even realize that she’s doing it, or like she can’t help it. Her fingers tighten, squeeze, reminding Steve of a kneading cat. 

“You sure you want to?” Steve asks, drifting closer despite himself. There’s something primal inside of himself that makes every second that he’s spending not touching the omega squirming with heat in front of him feel just plain  _ wrong. _ But he’s not a fucking animal, he’ll ask, of course he’ll ask--

_ “Yes,” _ she says, sounding deeply, profoundly irritated that they’re at all hesitant about this, need twisting at the edges of the word. 

That’s enough for Steve. He pounces across Sam’s lap so he can get her into his arms, sort of squishing Sam into the back of the couch in the process. Natasha loses her hold on Sam, but makes an approving sound nevertheless. Her hands slide around the back of his neck, pulling him in close close closer to that  _ intoxicating _ scent. Bucky’s got her hair out of the scrunchie, and is sliding his fingers (not the metal ones, they catch on the strands sometimes) through it, scratching at her scalp in a way that makes Natasha  _ purr.  _

Bucky really likes Natasha’s hair. It almost makes Steve want to grow his own out for his sake, except for how that would be very annoying, actually. 

“None of you have any chill,” Sam says flatly, and gives Steve a shove. He sways slightly, but keeps his balance. 

“Sorry,” he says distractedly, and leans back away from Sam in apology, but pulling Natasha along with him because like hell he’s letting go of her when he’s finally gotten his hands on her. She’d probably stab him if he tried it, anyways. Bucky makes an annoyed noise as Natasha and her silky hair are removed from his grasp. He glares at Sam like it’s his fault. Natasha settles onto Steve’s lap like it’s her throne, imperious and at home. 

And still  _ squirming,  _ grinding restlessly down into Steve’s lap like she can’t stop herself. Steve’s still trying to wrap his head around that, watching Natasha Romanoff struggle in any way. He’s not quite managing it. Her chest heaves with her panting breaths. He’s never even seen her breathe unsteadily before. She always breathes like a metronome, even while fighting for her life or in heat or coming. 

“You’re doing the alpha thing,” Sam says. 

“What alpha--” he says, and gets distracted by Natasha lunging for his mouth like he’s about to try and dodge or something. She holds onto him like they can’t possibly be close enough, and he closes his eyes and forgets everything he was thinking. He can’t smell anything but her, now.  _ Natasha _ and  _ heat _ and  _ knot me, alpha.  _

“Letting the omega heat scent turn your brain off,” Sam says, and Steve’s way too entranced with the way Natasha bites down on his lower lip to try and remember what he’s talking about. He noises into it, and she groans, needy and impatient and needing  _ more.  _

“Not that there’s much going on up there usually,” Bucky says, and Steve knows just from his tone that he should punch him in the shoulder and call him a knucklehead for that, but. Later. He’ll do that later. It can wait. For now, Natasha’s hurriedly, almost  _ frantically, _ trying to get his clothes off. He needs to help her. 

They have to seperate for a moment for him to take his shirt off and throw it to the floor, which is when Natasha gasps, “Don’t stop asking me questions.” 

“What?” Steve asks, having entirely forgotten how this evening started. 

“Seriously?” Sam asks incredulously, apparently still in possession of all of his short term memory. 

“This is still an acclimatization session, I’m just multitasking.” 

It is honestly fucking astonishing how many polysyllabic words she can get out while she smells like  _ that.  _ She never stops being shockingly impressive. Steve’s pretty sure he would’ve been reduced to impatient grunts and moans by now in her position. 

She  _ does _ go for his throat with such enthusiasm once he’s got his shirt off that he wonders for a moment if she’s about to tear it out with her teeth, but she just bites it sweetly, sucking and licking. 

“Do you seriously think this is a good idea?” Sam asks her. 

Natasha bites back down on his throat. 

“Like, really. Be honest, what’s your judgement call on this whole situation?” 

She bites down harder. 

“You don’t think you might be making a mistake?” 

Harder. She’s trembling underneath his hands. She still smells of a heat turned up to eleven, like  _ omega _ and  _ mine, _ but also, increasingly, of distress. It’s… upsetting. He wants to get rid of whatever’s making her upset, but that’s  _ Sam  _ and he’s just doing what she asked him to and he just holds her, not having as much fun as he’d been having just a moment ago. 

“Nat? What do you think--” 

She unclamps her jaw from around Steve’s throat, and hot blood slides down. Not a lot, but some. He doesn’t mind, it’s not a serious wound. 

_ “Yes, _ this is a good idea,” she says, and her eyes are narrowed furiously, her face twisted up in a snarl of effort. It clashes incongruously with the heat sweet smell of her. “You’re mine, you’re safe, it’s fine to be weak with you and so long as you’re touching me and fucking me I can focus on trying not to answer questions except  _ it’s impossible!”  _

She throws her head against his collar bone, shoulders hunched, nails raking down his arms as she shouts wordlessly with frustration. 

He’s literally never seen her showing this much emotion without it being some sort of con before. He wishes it wasn’t pure rage, but he supposes it could be worse. He doesn’t really know what to say, though, and he looks a little bit desperately over at Sam and Bucky. 

“Were you expecting to be able to flawlessly resist from the very first attempt?” Bucky asks, not anywhere near as stressed as Steve is. Well, he’s a beta, his hormones probably aren’t going haywire in response to Natasha’s heat pheromones. He’s cheating. 

_ “Yes,” _ she snarls. She grinds her hips down onto Steve’s still clothed dick, and fuck, he should really fix that. 

“Well, too bad,” Sam says, smoothly following Bucky’s lead. “Not even you get to be perfect at everything right from the start. I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but you’re only human. My condolences.” 

She spits a long string of vicious words in Russian into the crook of his bleeding, marked up neck that he’s ninety percent certain is just vitriolic cussing. He smooths a comforting hand up her back and she arches up into the contact. 

“Clothes,” she says, yanking roughly at his belt buckle. _ “Off.”  _

“Yeah,” he agrees, and tries to lift Natasha off himself. She holds on firmly. “Uh, Nat--” 

She hisses at him. Okay, yeah, there’s that heat-irrationality he’s heard so much about but never seen from her before. Omegas are usually supposed to be irrational in a sweet needy sort of way though, but Natasha seems to still be murderously furious at herself for not succeeding effortlessly. 

“Okay, fine,” Sam says wryly. “I’ll accept for now that you’re cool with this, considering that you look like two inches away from choking Steve out to have your wicked way with his unconscious body. But he’s gotta get his pants off first if you want for him to knot you. How about you come over here to us while he works on that?” 

“Should probably take your clothes off before she gets here so we don’t run into the same problem again,” Bucky points out. 

“Point,” Sam says, and shrugs his shirt off. Natasha perks up, making an intrigued noise, and she slides out of Steve’s lap over towards Sam. Steve takes a hold of her soft, cozy pyjama pants as she goes, and she leaves them behind without seemingly even noticing as she goes. Sam’s fortunately already got his pants around his knees by the time she gets to his lap. 

Despite all of his protestations, it’s clear to see that he  _ is _ erect, so that’s nice. Steve wants for all of his friends to have a good time, no one uncomfortable or pressed. Beta scents are subtler than alpha or omega, but Steve’s nose is good enough to get past that usually. But Natasha’s heat scent is overwhelming and everywhere, it feels like, masking everything else. He thinks if he strains very hard though, sniffing at the air in a way that usually gets him made fun of, that he can smell the familiar scent of Sam’s arousal underneath Natasha’s overpowering  _ knot me alpha  _ smell. 

Bucky helps drag Sam’s pants off the rest of the way as Natasha settles in, and fuck, but Steve loves that picture. He wants to paint this and hang it on a wall. 

“Ask me questions,” she orders and pulls her own shirt off herself with so much urgency it’s almost violent. 

Sam hesitates. Steve gets it. He doesn’t want for her to get upset and furious again, when they could instead be pampering and fucking her, giving her the heat she deserves. 

_ “Ask,” _ she says forcefully, and grabs his dick to line it up with her hole. No foreplay necessary, apparently. Heat. She sits down all at once, and Sam makes a punched out noise, hands flying to her hips as if he just needs to hold onto something. She melts and makes a happy little sigh, for a moment satisfied. And then she starts moving again, hard and fast straight away, urgent and needy and desperate for  _ more. _

“I--” Sam says and chokes, clinging to her as she moves. Steve completely understands. He can’t think of a single thing to say, looking at this. He does think to unzip himself though, because that situation really was starting to feel painful. He starts pulling his jeans down, not tearing his eyes away from Natasha riding Sam mercilessly for even a moment. 

“How does it feel?” Bucky asks, the only cool and composed person left in this room, apparently. Bucky’s never really  _ done _ the whole sex thing, has just liked to watch or stroke their hair and sides and talk to them as they touch each other. As long as Bucky’s happy, Steve’s happy. And it is a very, very nice experience to have Bucky’s hand on the nape of his neck and his hot breath and voice in his ear as he fucks Sam to within an inch of his life. It works for them very well. 

“Good,” she groans, and she seems maybe too distracted with just how good it feels to be frustrated at herself for not resisting answering. 

“How good?” Bucky asks, unfazed. 

_ “So _ good,” she sighs, taking a moment to roll her hips luxuriously. Sam’s eyes flutter closed as he breathes shakily. Natasha still doesn’t seem upset. 

Bucky might be onto something here. Asking her  _ good _ questions that she doesn’t get mad at herself for answering, that doesn’t upset her and bring the mood down. God, he’s so smart. 

“More details than that,” Steve rasps. He digs his fingers into the couch so that he won’t start touching his own straining dick, because he’s saving that for his omega. She really might kill him if he knots up before she can get on him. 

Bucky smiles at him as he joins in, and Steve smiles back, feeling stupid with arousal and pheromones and  _ happy. _ His people are all here, and they’re fucking. This is his idea of a perfect way to spend the afternoon. 

“He fills me up just right,” she says, and Sam groans and presses his forehead against her chest as he snaps his hips up into her. They look beautiful together. Bucky runs a hand down the back of Sam’s neck, soothing and approving, and he runs the other one through Natasha’s red hair, gripping it lightly and pulling slowly until she’s got her throat and back arched beautifully. She looks like art. “He’s so _ hot  _ and I felt so empty but he’s fixed it.” 

Sam fixes his grip on Natasha’s hips and lifts her partway off his dick, only to slam her back down as he snaps his hips up in time. She _ howls, _ clawing at him, and Bucky lets go just to watch, eyes dark and intent. Steve’s hips twitch minutely up into the air without him telling them to, and he licks his lips, feeling dry mouthed and hungry and eager. Sam and Natasha  _ fuck,  _ and they look wonderful, lovely. 

“You feel perfect,” Sam tells her, returning the favor. He kisses her breasts, and keeps fucking her. “Wet and tight. Smell so good.” 

Natasha moans. She’s sweating, flushed, dark eyed,  _ loud.  _ She’s normally so restrained, so composed. This is going to kill him. 

“Fuck me fuck me  _ fuck me,”  _ she demands, begs, even as Sam does exactly that. Steve feels hot, like an overheating engine. Energy and potential and the need to move and touch coils underneath his skin, loud and desperate inside of him. He bites his lip so hard that it almost bleeds, and he breathes in the delicious scent of his beta fucking his omega. 

Eventually, Natasha grinds her hips down onto Sam’s dick in harder, desperately rolling her hips against him like she’s trying to crush their pelvises, muscles straining, and then she holds onto him tight and desperate as she goes stiff and trembling, a long, helpless noise dragged out of her mouth as she comes. 

Sam goes dutifully still for it, even as he pants hot breaths into her hair as she plasters herself against him. Except then after only about ten seconds she jerks her hips meaningfully, and he groans. 

“What do you want?” Bucky asks, still calm, still looking. 

_ “More,”  _ she says. 

“Fuck,” Sam says, and then starts fucking her again. They swear, gasp out each others names, breathe oh my gods, until finally Sam clenches his eyes shut and grasps at Natasha so that his nails leave behind red lines on her pale skin as he makes a strangled, overwhelmed sound and comes. Natasha doesn’t stop moving for it, even as Sam holds tightly onto her now bruised hips, twitching and grinding down onto his dick as much as she can where Sam’s buried hilt deep in her, swearing and breathless as he orgasms. 

“Be more specific,” he says, which is nice of him, because Steve’s not sure that he’d be able to ask that question on his own right now. Any question at all, really. The word  _ specific _ is definitely too many syllables for him right now. 

“I want more  _ cock,” _ she growls, a very un-omega like sound, but so wonderfully Natasha right in this moment. “I want to get fucked and held and filled with come. I want  _ you. _ I want knotted.” 

She is telling the complete truth. Steve feels like there’s fire trapped underneath his skin. 

“Well, that’s good, because our alpha looks pretty ready by now,” Bucky says. 

Natasha looks towards Steve. Her eyes are wide and dark, intense. She clenches down around Sam one last time, who lets his head fall back against the couch as he swears again, and then she makes herself lever herself up off his dick. She looks like she’s very sorry to be doing it, but then she moves towards Steve, legs shaking, come dripping down her inner thighs, and a hungry determination on her intent face. 

“Hi,” Steve says stupidly, and she makes a noise and lunges for his mouth again, kissing him. There’s still a faint aftertaste of his blood on her mouth, and it’s strangely nice. He licks into her mouth, enjoys her tongue, and tries to lift her onto his dick without stopping for breath. She makes the happiest muffled noises into the kiss when he makes it, and Steve feels like the greatest, luckiest alpha on the planet. She clenches down around him like she never wants to let his cock go. He’s very fine with that, he can stay right here for as long as she wants. 

Bucky doesn’t even need to ask, this time. 

_ “Mmph.” _ Natasha twitches down onto his dick, and Steve groans. Natasha doesn’t let noises escape her, doesn’t make a single sound that isn’t entirely intentional, except for  _ now,  _ apparently, and it’s driving him crazy. “Thank Christ, I felt so empty.” 

“For the five seconds it took you to get on him?” Sam asks dryly, voice wrecked in a way that makes Steve shiver, that makes Natasha’s breath hitch in response to him moving. 

“Yes,” she hisses, and starts to move her hips up and down on Steve’s shaft. Steve swears and grabs at her hips to try and help make the pace even harder, faster, more brutal. Natasha laughs breathlessly, hands braced on Steve’s shoulders as she works with him to pound herself down onto his cock. “Oh, oh, that’s perfect, yes, go as fast as possible, don’t hold back, it’s okay, you don’t have to be careful--” 

He knows he doesn’t have to be careful with her, not with this, and it makes his blood feel hot. He leans forward to taste her throat, teeth grazing the pale, vulnerable expanse of skin. With her foundation wiped away, there’s a long scar revealed near the base of her throat, across her windpipe. He traces it with his tongue, moans at the taste of her fresh sweat and the  _ smell _ of her, so good it makes him feel dizzy. 

He keeps relentlessly pushing and pulling her up and down his cock, and she hasn’t stopped talking for even a moment, not for a second. “--friction so good,  _ need _ it, desperate enough to try and crawl out of my  _ skin _ if I don’t have you in me--” 

“Fuck,” he pants, overwhelmed by the fucked out, breathless, eager way the filthy words pour out of her, like she isn’t even thinking her words over, just saying whatever goes through her mind as soon as it appears. She can’t lie. She can’t even cover up her noises or her need, can’t cover up and hide and divert. He loves those parts of her, because he loves Natasha, but seeing her so raw and vulnerable because she  _ decided _ that it was fine for him and Sam and Bucky to see her raw and vulnerable is intoxicating, awe inspiring. He could get drunk on this level of trust, from this woman, this omega. 

She cries out, and stops mercilessly driving herself up and down his cock, instead grinding as far down as she can go, as if he could possibly go even deeper into her. He stops moving her, and holds onto her hips so hard that they’ll definitely bruise (Natasha bruises like a peach), while she shakes and shivers to pieces in his lap. A long string of broken Russian pours of her, presumably absolutely filthy sentiments. Bucky laughs at whatever she’s saying, low and warm, and Steve looks over towards him. 

Sam and Bucky’s limbs are tangled together, cuddling, Sam looking on with sated post coital interest, Bucky watching with the appreciation of someone appraising a fine artwork, perfectly content to just watch and not touch. Steve could reach out and touch them without straining, they’re so close. 

So he does. He reaches out, and Bucky catches his hand, fingers threading through his fondly. He brings Steve’s hand over to Sam’s mouth, who smears a lazy kiss onto Steve’s knuckles indulgently as Natasha clenches around his cock, trembling with overwhelmed sensation and pleasure and smelling like an absolute feast and he--

And he--

Steve blinks spots rapidly out of his eyes. His normal reaction to being disoriented is to immediately try and remember if he’s got a gun or the shield on him or not, except that he’s surrounded by safe, safe smells and he feels incredible and there’s a wonderful sound that he recognizes eventually as Sam’s easy laughter. 

“Man, you looked like you went to a different planet for a minute there,” he drawls, in a voice that says that he’s been well fucked. 

Oh, right. 

Steve just came so hard he  _ blacked out _ for a moment. 

“Was that what you wanted?” Sam asks, and Steve doesn’t understand for a moment, before Natasha clenches possessively around his knot and his breath leaves him as effectively as if he caught a haymaker to the solar plexus. 

“Exactly what I wanted,” she says with deep satisfaction, smiling smugly, dark eyed and flushed and ravished, her hair a mess, hickeys on her throat. She looks as perfect as she does when she’s flawlessly polished in formal wear with an undetectable yet vast amount of knives, poisons, and various weaponry hidden about her person. More so. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen her this undone, and this is the first time that it’s been done by pleasure instead of an inadvisable amount of blood loss. 

“Good,” is all he can think to say, and squeezes her hips once with his hands. She sighs and melts into his arms, chin hooking over his shoulder, arms going around him. Utterly relaxed. She smells happy-sated-his, and he could die happy with this scent permeating his home. 

Eventually, Sam cracks open a gatorade bottle and makes him and Natasha finish it with him, and Bucky sticks his feet underneath Steve’s thigh and his head on Sam’s lap. Sam and Bucky share snacks, Steve soaks in the feeling of his mates all around him, and Natasha dazedly mumbles about how happy she is, how good she feels, how much she loves them all into his collarbone. 

It’s a damned good date night. 

-

Natasha wakes up feeling sated and deliciously sore in a way that happens very rarely for her. Someone’s carrying her. She punches them in the throat so that they choke and drop her. She lands on her feet. 

“I told you!” Sam shouts from the living room. “I told you just to let her sleep on the couch, man.” 

“He did tell you,” Bucky agrees. 

Steve puts his hands on his knees and wheezes for a bit, flipping the betas off after a moment without looking at them. 

“Huh,” Natasha says, taking the situation in, letting her memories come back to her. They’re bright and hazy with dizzy good feelings and unrestrained, guileless pleasure. She frowns. “I performed badly.” 

“I would disagree about that,” Sam says. 

“I don’t mean the sex,” she corrects. “I’m incredible at it.” 

Steve stands up straight, looking a bit red faced and teary eyed. He rubs his throat and looks at her, seemingly caught between consternation and apologeticness. 

“You didn’t even have to ask questions at the end,” she grumbles, walking back to the couch, leaving him to decide how he feels about the whole throat punching thing. It’s admittedly pretty embarrassing that she attacked a friendly like that, but in her defense it was just a little punch, and he should’ve known better than to let the protective ‘cherish the in heat omega’ alpha instincts overpower his better judgement. 

It was still sloppy of her. She should’ve pretended to be unconscious until she had a better read on the situation. Ugh, fucking drug hangovers. Her mouth is so  _ dry.  _

She flops back into the couch, between Bucky and Sam, and scans the table for snacks. Oh good, Steve got the exotic red fanta. She reaches out for it and twists the cap off, takes a long pull. 

“Water would probably be better,” Sam notes. 

Natasha snorts inelegantly. 

“Yeah, I know. I just felt like someone should say it.” 

“In hindsight,” she says, “maybe the sex distracted me a little bit from the goal of resisting answering questions.” 

“That did occur to me,” Bucky says dryly. 

“Yeah, about that,” says Sam in his  _ we’re about to have a serious mature adult conversation like reasonable human beings, I don’t like it either but it should probably happen anyways _ voice. Natasha grimaces and drinks more sugary soda. Steve comes over to the couch to sit next to Bucky. “Having sex while drugged out of your fucking skull on, uh, heat and truth serum, I guess, should at least be planned in advance before it happens, but it just sort of fell into our lap and we had to deal with it. You good?” 

“I’m good,” she says. 

“I love how you said that so quickly and dismissively, without thinking about it at all,” Sam says witheringly. 

She sighs and collapses back into the couch. Steve too casually puts his arm over the back of the couch. He always gets a bit hovery around her heats, a bit fussy, and she tolerates it with indulgent grace. She forgives him. 

“The only thing I’m upset about is how profoundly I failed. I should’ve done better than that.” 

“Hey, now--” 

She holds up a hand.  _ “Don’t _ give me the ‘you did your best and that’s what matters’ pep talk. It’s for American elementary schoolers.” 

Sam gives her a Look. She sighs again, but lets the hand fall. 

“You did your best and that’s what matt--” 

He can’t get through all of the sentence without bursting out into laughter at the look on her face. Steve chuckles along fondly, and even Bucky’s mouth twists up a little with some amusement. 

“Sorry, couldn’t resist,” he says, smiling now, and she likes that expression on his face much better than the last one, cautious and careful like he was being careful of his words. “Just, that was your first try alright? You were completely caught off guard by the, uh, extra symptoms. And we learned a lot.” 

“Like how it’s maybe a good thing that I didn’t do this with Clint after all,” she says. She lets her lips curl with sardonic amusement at the idea. 

_ “Right, _ yeah, oh my god. Stroke of good luck there.” 

“So, just double checking, but you were fine with the sex,” Steve butts into the conversation like a train that’s never heard of subtlety. 

_ “Fine _ would be pretty uncharitable. Getting humble on me, Captain?” she asks. She very generously doesn’t verbally point out to everyone how he relaxes against her at the needless confirmation. “But alright, I get it. I’ll accept the wound licking, but I  _ will _ do better on my second try,” she says determinedly. 

“Of course,” Sam says along with a little eye roll. Bucky just nods at her in matter of fact agreement. 

Steve’s eyebrows jump up. “You sure you wanna go through all of that again, repeatedly? Heats are exhausting. Uh, or so I’m told.” 

“I performed badly, which means that I  _ really _ have to train and acclimate to this drug. And I’m tougher than a heat. I can take it.” She trails her fingers across the hickeys spread across Steve’s collarbone. “Not that it’s exactly a trial.” 

It’s ridiculous how he still goes red at a little bit of flirting after knotting her only a few hours ago. Fondness blooms warm in her chest. She doesn’t mind that she let all of her walls down around him, around any of them. It was a good choice. She wouldn’t let herself be vulnerable around someone that she doesn’t already trust completely, after all. And she was right, wasn’t she? Here she is, safe and sated and perfectly healthy and content. They took good care of her while she was weak. They’re a good team. 

“... I  _ am _ curious about what happens when a beta takes it, though,” she muses. 

“He should do it,” Sam and Bucky say simultaneously, pointing at each other. 

“You should wrestle for it,” she decrees, and Steve grins and tucks his arm around her shoulders, hovery and fussy like he is after every heat she has. She leans into it. It’s fine to be weak, just with these three people. She’ll allow it. 

Bucky brings Sam down onto the floor and Sam cusses him out for it. 


End file.
